subprocess

I present to you for your own reference, the top 10 most frequently asked questions to me. Please consult this list before asking me a question from now on, it will speed things up:

Q1. Would like to help save the environment?
A1. Nope.

Q2. Denver Voice, help the homeless?
A2. No.

Q3. Room for cream?
A3. Yes, please.

Q4. Would you like cream and sugar with that?
A4. No thanks. But leave some room at the top.

Q5. Steak with green?
A5. Please!

Q6. Spare some change?
A6. Change comes from within.

Q7. What’s for dinner?
A7. Tonight it’s broiled cajuny tilapia with buttered noodles and buttered steamed broccoli.

Q8. Did you submit your timecard?
A8. CRAP! No, I didn’t.

Q9. What’s the weather?
A9. It will be hot today, so you can wear short sleeves and shorts if you want.

Q10. How are you?
A10. Doing well. Except for some reason I keep losing hearing in my right ear, then it aches for a few days, and then it’s back to normal. I should probably see a doctor about that.

Also, a freebie: Typing a blog post on a blackberry pearl can be very annoying.

July 2nd, 2009 | Category: Linux | Leave a comment

So, the interview with the colleague of Tiller made it sound to me like they only accepted patients for late term abortion if the baby was not going to live or if giving birth would kill or cripple the mother.

Turns out they also did late term abortions because of “mental anguish”? If that is so, then no, I do not support that. There is no circumstance imaginable where mental anguish from giving birth to a baby would be crippling to the mother.

Jillian also brought up a point. It is pretty darn near impossible to get to the late term with a pregnancy that could seriously hurt the mother. With even basic prenatal care, the assumption is that any complications that would risk the mothers life would be found much much much earlier than “late term”.

In that case… the question becomes: if the mother neglected to get proper care early in the pregnancy, should she be allowed to terminate the pregnancy in the late term in order to spare her self a crippling/fatal injury.

My gut tells me no, it’s her fault for choosing not to get prenatal care. But I’m sure there’s probably some hypothetical situation where it was not the mother’s fault. It doesn’t seem to me that there could be a straight answer to this. It’s never going to be 100% OK in all cases or 100% not OK in all cases. Almost feels like it should be a case by case decision.

So, I have no answer. But if people are getting proper prenatal care, it shouldn’t be a big issue.

June 6th, 2009 | Category: Linux | Comments (2)

With the cold blooded murder of Tiller being in the news recently, I’ve thought a bit further on my own views of abortion. I usually just say that I’m pro-life. But I think… maybe I’m not?

I hate that everyone tries to categorize people in to two groups. It feels like a “with us or against us” mentality in all that we do. Either you’re a republican or you’re a democrat. Either you’re liberal or you’re conservative. Either you’re pro-life or you’re pro-choice. Everyone wants everything to be black and white. But they forget about the grays.

Just as political opinion has a bit of a sliding scale, I think abortion rights views should too. And so I decided to try and determine where I sit between pro-life and pro-choice. Near the middle? Mostly pro-life? Mostly pro-choice? A little of one or the other?

And I failed. I’m really not sure.

I support what Tiller stood for. I know that he was going to trial over allegations that he did things beyond what he said he stood for. But, innocent until proven guilty. So I can say that I support what Tiller did at his clinic. Not what he allegedly did. I support what he and the various other doctors supporting him claim he did.

I saw an interview with his colleague who will most likely be taking over the practice. His colleague stressed that they perform late term abortions for only a handful of reasons. Things like: the baby is already dead, the baby has a condition that is not compatible with life, the pregnancy has a complication that threatens the mother’s life or a major function of her body. Not only do they have strict requirements for even beginning to talk about a late term abortion, they regularly and often turned mothers away. They determined that abortion was not medically needed and told mothers outright “no”.

Sure, there were some people who argued against him. They said things like, “I had a baby with a condition that was not compatible with life. I chose to give birth and the hours I had with my baby were wonderful and I’d do it again if I was in the same situation.” And good for her! But that doesn’t mean everyone is capable of dealing with the situation in that way. Everyone is different. The key words there are that she chose to give birth to a baby who would only live for a couple of hours.

So, I am for late term abortions, if there are medical reasons for it. Does that make me pro-choice? Some people would think so.

Also, I am for emergency contraception. People do stupid things in the heat of the moment. Especially when alcohol is involved. Or, there are cases of sexual assault. These moments are perfect for emergency contraception.

So there you go. I’m pro-life, except when you should be able to choose.

June 6th, 2009 | Category: Random | Leave a comment

Normally comment spam amuses me. I’m shocked at the stupidity of some of them… and can’t believe that people would fall for their ruse and approve of them. Sure, I am a brilliant blogger (ha) and all… but if you praise me for no reason with a name like “Toilet Fixtures”… well, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t authentic praise. As my last post was about.

But this company… Softwise Online… went too far. About a year ago, my Grandma passed away. I shared my thoughts and feelings of it in a blog post. So, this asshole found my post and tried to get a comment approved to the post about my Grandma’s death.

They used the name “payday advance online”, provided a link to their scummy site, and posted this comment: “This is such sad news. I am so sorry for your loss. I hope you know it hurts now, and it will get better. I am sorry, it is hard and sad.”

I doubt a spam bot is sophisticated enough to form such a relevant comment. And the IP it came from was not from some SEO consultant or a botnet… it came from Softwise Online’s pool of IP’s.

So there you go Softwise Online, you wanted exposure on my blog, you now have exposure on my blog.

May 31st, 2009 | Category: Linux | Leave a comment

I’d just like to point out that posting comments either by hand, or with a bot, with a name like “Shower Stools” or “Toilet Fixtures”, qualifies you as stupid.

Even though you rightly praise me for how brilliant I am and how elegant my writing is, I will not approve your comment.

So please, stop with the being stupid… although, I guess that’s not really something you can control.

May 24th, 2009 | Category: Linux | Comments (1)

Taking a break from my “turning old” series to think out loud again. Err… If you’d call this out loud. Anyway…

Just about everyone thinks of Christianity when the subject of morality comes up. You get looked down upon for doing immoral things and praised for avoiding immoral things. But… I’ve been thinking lately how messed up Christian morals really are. They change with society… with what is accepted by the masses. It’s almost like the Church gives in to peer pressure.

• It used to be immoral to eat pig. Now you can eat all the bacon you want.
• It used to be immoral to work on a Sunday. That’s OK now, work away 7 days a week.
• It used to be immoral for a woman to have a position of authority over a man. Now it’s immoral to consider that immoral.
• It used to be moral to own a slave. Now it is extremely immoral to own a slave.
• It used to be immoral to use birth control. Now it’s debatable, but more often than not it’s accepted as moral now.
• It used to be immoral to believe the Earth to be round.
• It used to be immoral to believe that the Earth was not the center of the universe.

There are probably more examples of morals drastically changing, but that’s a good enough list for now.

So here’s a new one for you:

• It used to be immoral to be a homosexual.

It’s the next step in the evolution of Christian morals. Several states have taken the lead in making gay marriage legal. Soon all the rest will follow. Soon the masses will all agree that homosexuality is not immoral.

Hard to nail down soon to a more specific time frame though. I bet you though, some day in the future someone is going to be told “You know, the Christian church used to be anti homosexuality.” And they’re going to be all “What, really!? You have to be joking…”

May 3rd, 2009 | Category: Linux | Leave a comment

A bit of a disclaimer on this one. There are things that happened in this year, 1998-1999, that some who know me may be shocked to learn. I call it my party year. So feel free to skip this one if you don’t want to know the details.

Also… I am for the legalization of drugs. Not because I am a druggie of some sort, as I said, this was my party YEAR. No more than a year, and this year was 10 years ago. I believe that drugs cause more harm being illegal than they would if they were legalized. As a 20-something who should have known better, I did things without regard to ALL the consequences. Particularly, consequences to a question that was hardly regarded was “just how much trust should I have in chemicals bought off a black market?” And then there are legal consequences to breaking serious laws.

So, even though I am for the legalization of drugs, I in no way endorse using illegal drugs. Even though some may be “more safe” than currently legalized drugs, that doesn’t mean illegally gained said drugs are safer than legally obtained drugs.

Summer of 1998-1999

I went back to work for Oakland Schools every summer that I came back. They’d always find a spot for me, but always insisted that I move on to better things after college. Anyway, some of my new co-workers were really in to throwing small LAN parties. Where you all haul your computers to one guys house, hook them up on the local network, and then kill each other in various video games until the sun comes up.

These were great fun for a geek like me… Then one of them brought booze to a party. My first time drinking, and boy did we drink. Screwdrivers were my booze of choice. We also listened to lots of techno music. One night, instead of a LAN party, we all just hung out at someone’s girlfriend’s house. And out came the marijuana.

Yeah, I was curious as to what all the fuss was over pot. I knew it was safe, physically that is. I don’t think I gave the legal ramifications much thought. So I tried it and, holy shit, it was one of the worst nights of my life. I don’t believe my experience was what most people feel on pot. I don’t see how it could be and be as popular of a recreational drug as it is. I remember the feeling so well… even now, 11 years later. Everything I tried to do took an extra 10 seconds or so before I could do it. Everything I heard had to have been delayed the same long 10 seconds before it got to me. I was incapable of doing anything but stare straight ahead with my mouth hung open. Just wishing it would all end soon. I felt detached from my body, like I was floating above it, held to it by a thin piece of thread that could snap at any moment. I retreated in to a dark bedroom and closed my eyes. I concentrated on staying IN me and waited for it all to end.

That experience really disturbed me. I wasn’t quite the same after it… I had never felt so disconnected from myself. I had a strong desire to leave everything. I wanted out of Waterford, I wanted out of Great Lakes Christian College and out of Lansing. I wanted something new, an adventure. About a month before I was to head back to college my work friends invited me to my first rave. At that rave I took ecstasy.

It was the complete opposite of the night I smoked pot. In every way. I felt more connected to myself than I ever had before. I was able to see myself more clearer than I had ever done. My thoughts were quicker, not slower. I wanted to socialize, not hide. And it was a lot of fun.

So off to college I went, having the most messed up summer of my life. I remembered that Jason really liked techno music, and had talked about raves before. And I could tell Jason anything. So I emailed him and told him everything. From the drinking, to the pot, the rave and the ecstasy. I swear, in about 30 minutes I got a response back from him… I wish I still had it, but hotmail deleted my account data a long time ago. It was something along the lines of “I’m coming to get you, we’ll be there to pick you up in about 2 hours.”

He wasn’t joking. He got a ride from Grand Rapids to Lansing at the last moment, found a “house party” (kind of like a mini-rave in someone’s house) and picked me up. I had entered a somewhat hidden part of Jason’s life. So there we were, at a random house in downtown Lansing, music thumping, lights flashing… He was introducing me to many new people, showing me a lot of the rave culture. It was great fun.

At that house party Jason took me outside, away from most people. We were sitting on the lawn on a beautiful night. It had to have been 3 am at least. We joked and laughed for a bit and then he got serious. He looked directly in to my eyes and said “there’s something you want ask me.” He was right too… And I felt stupid. Here he was being so amazingly courageous and brave… but I couldn’t do it. He must’ve been waiting all night for me to bring it up. Finally he gave up and started the conversation. And yet I still stumbled on it! I eventually got it out and did ask him. And it was an amazing feeling. I was wrong a bit and he cleared up a lot. But, I knew then that an already great friend had just become unimaginably greater. We no longer had any giant secrets that we had to always hide.

I did a lot more partying after that. There were some weekend when we’d start partying on Thursday in Lansing, party all the way to Chicago, and then party back to Grand Rapids. And I’d get back to Lansing just in time for Monday morning classes. We ended up with quite a fun group… And it’s how I met Jillian. I needed a ride one night to a gay bar downtown. The gay bar threw a really fun “rave night” on Thursdays and Jason would always drive to Lansing for it. Jillian stuck around and kept coming with us to different parties… and well, we became close friends.

I could go on and on with the partying stories. I will admit this, I mostly never, knowingly, did anything besides pot, ecstasy, acid and shrooms. And the only two I enjoyed were ecstasy and acid. I have stories involving these things… Getting split up in Lansing and having to go back to campus while tripping balls. Getting my parent’s car towed in downtown Chicago. Getting lost in Grand Rapids because they closed the party down before anyone had stopped tripping. Or taking one pill and not feeling it’s effects, so of course you should find another dealer and take a 2nd pill, right? I think the first was mescaline… we’re still not sure, but it definitely had some effects! Anyway, don’t do drugs. They’re illegal and that is enough reason to consider them unsafe! The black market is not trustworthy and no matter how much you “trust” the dealer, it’s still not guaranteed to be what you’re expecting. Which means it’s never safe and the legal consequences are high.

Spiritually I was drifting further and further from Christianity. The people at these parties, the ravers, they showed me what it meant to be like Christ more than a Christian ever had. They were seriously the most loving, most accepting and most caring strangers I had ever met. And you can’t say it was the drugs… I spent a lot of time with sober ravers too. So here were all these wonderful and kind people from all sorts of religions. Christians, Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists, etc etc etc. All of them were genuine. All of them were moral.

I ended up realizing that I didn’t like God.

So there I was… a Christian, at a Bible college, who didn’t like God. The Christian God of the Bible, that is. No, it was more than dislike. I hated God. I completely disagreed with many of the things he did in the Bible and I did not think of him as worthy of my praise.

Towards the end of my 3rd year at GLCC my friend Patrick (read about him in parts 1-3) asked me to move in with him in Ann Arbor. He was in need of a new roommate and he said he “could find me a job.” Since I was definitely not going to continue in my Christian education, I agreed. I left mid semester.

Well, not completely, Jillian would drive to pick me up and take me to some George Brown classes. Christian or not, his classes were great. And… it wasn’t a short drive. We spent more and more time together in Ann Arbor. And one day we kissed. It was a shock to both of us.

So Ann Arbor was pretty much the end of the party days. It dwindled out… Jason and I both realized that we had more fun sober. Sitting around and chatting about things all night long. He was always a strong Christian and would often want to discuss theological things. A favorite of his was “if God knows everything then why would he have created humans knowing what we’d do? Knowing what would come of it all?” His answer to that one was always that God had the ability to know everything, but didn’t let himself. You can’t have a true and loving relationship without free will. And if you know the entire outcome of the creation, is it really free will? I miss those conversations… But I went from a Christian who hates God to an agnostic that year.

So I said goodbye to Jesus and never looked back.

April 21st, 2009 | Category: Linux | Leave a comment

My journey just after high school has a lot to do with religion. So I guess I have to start there.

1997-1998

Given that I had an awesome early start to my career in IT at Oakland Schools, you’d think I’d head off to college for a computer related degree. Most people were shocked when I told them I was going to go to Great Lakes Christian College to study psychology. I had a huge thirst for apologetics and always greatly enjoyed helping friends through hard times. So it made sense to me.

In high school I was a part of two churches, one being the home church of Denny (he’s the one who first told me about Jesus) and the other being Mike’s. Because he was my best friend. I had a blast with both groups. I participated in the youth group of both (with Brandon Caroland being my youth minister at Mike’s church). One of the kids in the youth group at Denny’s church put together this massive binder of information on evolution. Specifically on how wrong it was and how the earth is young. Yep! A young earth creationist! I loved that binder and soaked up all the info I could out of it… and then I went to the internet. On the internet I discovered that 100% of that binder was easily dismissed by pesky things like facts and science. So I was excited when I was heading to GLCC to check out the college, there was a special event on evolution that day… I think by someone named Nathan? So awesome! I can go and here an educated college students findings on this stuff. Answers!

Well… that went about as good as you’d think. He spouted off the same exact misinformation the young kid in youth group compiled. I tried asking some questions… Bringing up counterpoints to things he said, but got dismissed and ignored. So that ended my spree of being a young earth creationist. But, I was pretty comfortable being a Christian who didn’t believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis.

Off to college I went. One of my strongest memories of starting college is about toilet paper. I was moving in to my new room (with my mystery roommate- who turned out to be a great guy- Benji) and I was hauling a huge cube of toilet paper in to my room. I grabbed it out of the car and ran fast… feeling embarrassed for some reason that I was bringing my own TP.

And one of my favorite memories is from just before the freshman orientation. We were told to dress nice for it, but I didn’t really have much nice clothes to wear. But, I had a huge bank account from having a nice nearly 100% disposable income for the past 3 years. I knew Jason Caroland from having Brandon as my youth minister, and Jason just happened to be back at GLCC that year. He was at Grand Valley State University for a bit, but thankfully he came back to GLCC in 1997. Jason and I had a very similar sense of humor and so we got along well from the start. We headed out to the East Lansing mall to get me some clothes for orientation… and I let Jason decide everything. I ended up leaving in khaki phat pants (you know, the kind all the ravers wear? They’re like cartoonishly exaggerated bell bottoms), a skin tight olive green stretchy shirt and a button down shirt over top of that, left unbuttoned.

Other strong memories of my first year at GLCC involves random theological debates you’d stumble upon walking around the boys dorm. People would argue over the most ridiculous things… like “If someone is on their deathbed and then accepts Jesus Christ but they die before they have a chance to be baptize, are they in Heaven or Hell?” I didn’t get it… I was of the opinion that the bible clearly tells you what to do and you should try to do what it says with all your ability. If you can’t, because you happen to die just minutes after accepting Jesus, well, that was really out of your control. It’s up to God now. But if it is in your control, don’t argue about whether or not it’s “needed”. Just do what it says to do.

The origin of my nickname: ThePet. Although my roommate was extremely nice and an overall great guy, I didn’t have much in common with him. Jason Caroland and I however got along great. I actually moved most of my stuff over to Jason’s room. Which was really just my computer and Playstation. So I spent all my time in Jason’s room and slept in my room. We talked about many things, philosophical things, silly things, theological things, music, etc… He introduced me to some great bands, like: Tears for Fears, The Cars, The Pogues and Michael Knott. It was actually a song by Michael Knott that made him decide to come back to GLCC that year: Double. So anyway, I spent all my time in his room, had all my stuff in his room, but didn’t live there. So I was always there and didn’t live there… One day Jason was introducing me to someone he had over and said something like, “This is Ryan… he… well… he doesn’t live here but he’s always here. I guess he’s our pet.” And so there it was, my nickname, The Pet.

My second year at GLCC went much like the first. Jason wasn’t there, he went back to GVSU, but Mike was. We had a room together and it was a great year of video games and music. Oh, and smoking. Come to find out that Mike really enjoyed cloves. And hey, they were nice. So we ended up smoking that year, and I ended up moving on to Marlboros even. Of course, at GLCC smoking was strictly prohibited on and off campus. As was watching rated R movies and being in the same room with a girl! So there was a small group of smokers that went for “walks”, or “drives”, or just walked down to the baseball field and smoked in the dug out.

Throughout all this time I was studying the Bible like I never studied it before. Since I was pretty new to Christianity, most of the old testament was new to me. So going through the old testament was very new to me. After my sophomore year of college I had a lot of new questions, much like the questions I had for the young earth creationists. During the summer I started hanging out a lot with a co-worker of mine and went to my very first rave… More to come in part 4.

April 18th, 2009 | Category: Linux | Leave a comment

I left off my “life story in short little blurbs” around the start of my sophomore year of High School.

1995-1997

This is the year I met my good friend Mike Hodgman. We met at band camp and well… I can’t really remember the details. We just became instant best friends. It is also the first year I met my other good friend Christina Barberi. I remember seeing her at marching band practices and thinking “who is that cute girl?”

Now… choosing memories from High School is really difficult. I had so many strange things happen, at times I felt like I was in a sitcom. So this is be no means comprehensive. Plus, it’s hard remembering which year everything happened. Four years seems way too short of a time for all that went on.

A few months in to my job at Oakland Schools, I got a raise. It was awesome. I showed up to work and my boss called me in to her office. Technically, I worked for the student co-op. So she asked me, “Would it be OK if I asked for a raise for you?” Uhh… yeah. “Good, because I did. And it was a $3.00 raise.” I believe I was speechless here. This was about a 55% raise. “And…” More!? “… I had them make it retroactive to the day you started.” Wait, retroactive? “So for all the hours you worked here, you will be paid the additional $3.00 for those hours. And going forward it will be at your new rate.” She says it was because I “knew more than they were led to believe” when I was hired. Which… wasn’t really true. I picked up most of what I needed on the job, I’m just a quick learner. I will never forget that conversation though, or that awesome pay check! I miss 100% disposable income.

At one point in the middle of High School I joined a rock band. Ha! We called ourselves Latin Surprise Party, or LSP for short. Patrick was the drummer, Brook Pridemore was the lead guitarist/singer, Paul Phipps played bass and I was the backup guitarist. I remember Brook organizing it all… and it didn’t matter that I had no idea how to play guitar. I got private lessons though, and ended up joining jazz band at school.

So LSP’s early days were filled with music written by Brook. I really only remember one. Fascist Lifeguard. It consisted of 5 chords and a lot of strumming. The lyrics went something like: “Fascist lifeguard has got you now! In his pool of gelatinous drool!” We did a few cover songs too, like Weezer’s The Sweater Song (Sorry Rivers! We were just kids…). I think Patrick’s mom still has our one and only album. She could use it for blackmail, fortunately she’s pretty nice.

We actually ended up kicking Brook and Paul out of the band, and Mike Hodgman came in as guitarist/singer. Maybe they weren’t kicked out… I’m not sure, my memory is fuzzy. But the band became a strictly cover band with just Me, Mike and Patrick. Then it died.

I had another girl show interest in me during my rock star time too. Jenny, another friend from band. Again, I was way new to this dating thing. I knew she liked me, she knew I liked her. It was different from my first girlfriend… and well, I went weird and didn’t know what to do. In the end we just stayed friends and I have no regrets about that. Jenny was a great friend all throughout high school. I have great memories of drinking slurpees with her outside 7-11 after band practice. And she’s the one who introduced me to Smashing Pumpkin’s album Gish, particularly the kick ass song “Girl Named Sandoz.”

So then another girl showed interest in me, Sarah, and she was way more aggressive than the other girls. I had a lot of fun with Sarah. She was my first real girlfriend, in that she was my first real kiss. Lots of make out sessions. When she broke up with me it seriously broke my heart. My first ever true girlfriend and my first ever true breakup. I very clearly remember feeling like I had a huge part of me missing. Nothing to fill the big hole. WAY over reacted. But I learned a lot and experienced even more.

Continuing the theme of girls now, I must bring up Melody Joy Alexander! Being a big fan of Christian rock band Starflyer 59 and exploring this new Internet thing that Al Gore invented… I stumbled upon a Starflyer fan page with a big guestbook to sign (haha! Remember those guestbook cgi apps?). So I, of course, signed it. Then I scrolled through the many many many other signatures. And there was one that jumped out, her name was “Melody Joy Alexander”, and I just thought “what an awesome name!”. So I clicked on her email and told her. I think it was something like, “Starflyer ROCKS \m/, your name ROCKS \m/! Sorry- I’m kinda weird and dorky- Ryan.” And she emailed me back. And I emailed her back. And so on and so on… And I ended up making friends with one of the awesomest people ever. We emailed constantly throughout the rest of high school and most of college.

So after meeting Melody and being fully recovered from my first heartbreak ever, I did some serious thinking about dating. See… I’m quite the hopeless romantic. I thought about love all the time. I think I was in love with love. I realized that what I wanted to find wasn’t something I could search for. I decided that if you go out in search of love that you’ll find it in spots where it’s not. You’ll stretch things and twist things to try and take something that isn’t love and make it love. So I decided that I was done with dating. Yes, one real girlfriend and I was over it. I wasn’t going to look for love, I was going to look for friendship and if love found me I would know it.

So back to Christina. We ended up hitting it off really well. We were always on the phone chatting about things. Hanging out and watching movies. High school stuff. We became really good friends. In fact, we went to home coming together. Our friendship started to turn in to something more than friendship. I was nervous though… It was weird going from just friends to dating. I wasn’t really sure how fast to move. And… then there was that whole “I’m done with dating” thing. We held hands a bit and that was about it. Then we went back to just being friends. I still had feelings for her for quite a while after that. I don’t think I ever stopped until sophomore year of college. It was all really confusing and Melody probably got an email about every second of it. The only thing I regret is not taking her to Senior Prom. It was obvious she wanted me to ask her… But I didn’t want to go as just friends. I was stupid to not ask her, we would have had fun and it would have been some great memories. I still have lots of great memories with her though, definitely no shortage. For some reason the strongest memory I have of her is from going to watch the marching band at a competition. It was pouring rain and we had one umbrella. So there we were huddled together under one small umbrella, just chatting and having a fun time watching the competition.

Well that covers a lot of high school, especially the girls part. I guess I need a part 3, things get crazy after high school though. I start hanging out with Ryan Hunt and Jason Caroland. And my world gets turned upside down.

April 17th, 2009 | Category: Linux | Comments (1)